Potpourri of service for Oregon's 150th birthday
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In western Oregon, 31 stakes are celebrating the state's 150th birthday with a potpourri of diverse and large-scale service projects.
The vast majority of the service occurred July 25, running the gamut from assembling emergency preparedness kits and collecting food donations to beautifying schools and cleaning up cemeteries. A few stakes' projects took place as early as April and some won't occur for another month.
Elder Marvin T. Brinkerhoff, an Area Seventy, visited several of the service outings on July 25.
"They were wonderful," he said. "My wife and I got in the car and traveled all over the Portland area and visited six of them. We were very pleased — I think they met or exceeded our expectations in nearly every case.
"It was just wonderful to go see firsthand what people were doing, and also to see the reaction of those who were benefiting from this service. We met public officials and school leaders along with our members. It was very heartwarming to see not only the enthusiasm of the members but the gratitude from the community."
Milwaukie move
Public affairs director Norma Larsen of the Milwaukie Oregon Stake estimates that more than 400 volunteers from her stake saved the North Clackamas School District $235,000 during an eight-day period, from June 20-27.
With the school district set to open brand-new Happy Valley Elementary School this fall, a horde of volunteers was needed on June 20 and 27 to move massive amounts of furniture and books from two existing schools to the new one. In addition to supplying that labor, during the intervening week the Milwaukie stake also farmed out volunteers to 16 sites within the school district for the mundane, but necessary, task of applying bar codes to textbooks.
"We considered many different projects and voted on them as a committee," Sister Larsen said. "What we decided is that we could really serve the community best by doing this and also letting people in the community know about our value for family, education and kids. It just seemed like a perfect fit."
With so many volunteers and a strong collective work ethic, Church members completed the prescribed work in approximately half the hours the school district had anticipated the tasks would require.
"It was just absolutely amazing, all of it," Sister Larsen said. "We had so many little miracles happen in the lives of the people who brought this about.
"The feeling in our stake was delightful as we united together to do this. We got to know people on a little different level because we were intermingling with them in a different situation than just in Church. I think it unified our stake in a wonderful way."
Roots of service
Approximately a year and a half ago, Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the presidency of the Seventy and president of the North America Northwest Area charged Elder Brinkerhoff with strengthening public affairs efforts in Oregon.
"The organization of public affairs was the first daunting task," Elder Brinkerhoff said. "We never really had a well-organized multi-stake committee, either in Portland or any of these other communities. They were loosely run individual stakes having public affairs leaders. It was a challenge."
Dale Weight, former president of the Portland Oregon Temple, was called to head a multistake public affairs committee along with his wife, Carilee. Not only did the recent service efforts blossom under the watch of Brother and Sister Weight, but they also succeeded in persuading local cable operators to carry interruption-free broadcasts of General Conference throughout the Portland area for the first time.
"There've been a number of bridges built and barriers broken down," Elder Brinkerhoff said. "We really are just getting started. There's a lot of good that's yet to be done. We've had a good success with this group of projects, and we'll see where we go from here."
The Weights will be released from their current calling at the end of August so Brother Weight can serve as a stake patriarch. Taking their place are Gene and Arlene Platt; Brother Platt is an attorney who recently finished a 10-year tenure as president of the McMinnville Oregon Stake. The Platts, who worked with the Weights to shepherd this year's sesquicentennial service projects to fruition, will be tasked with building on the recent public affairs successes of the Church in Western Oregon.
"I'm very pleased that the Church is unitedly making an effort to participate with other Oregonians, good people of good faith, to help alleviate some of the economic and social concerns that are around us so prevalently," Brother Platt said. "It's clear that we need to take the bushel basket off this candle on a hill and become a light to our neighbors, and yet not be distinct or distinguished from those around us."
